PAROXYSM • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Paroxysm

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noun

Paroxysm n.

(Med.) The fit, attack, or exacerbation, of a disease that occurs at intervals, or has decided remissions or intermissions.

Any sudden and violent emotion; spasmodic passion or action; a convulsion; a fit. "The returning paroxysms of diffidence and despair."

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Etymology of 'Paroxysm'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Paroxysm" Quotes from Famous Books

... everybody was rich; and everybody was growing richer. The community, however, was torn to pieces by new doctrines in religion and in political economy; there were camp meetings, and agrarian meetings; and an election was at hand, which, it was expected, would throw the whole country into a paroxysm. ...

— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving

... it was dragged. Then, after a supreme paroxysm, the tentacle parted and the prey escaped. The tentacle disappeared into the mass of the baffled hunter. It made no attempt to follow the fleeing creature. It slowly relaxed along the bottom and ...

— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... morning, hoping that Sir Asinus will depart; but that gentleman betrays no intention of vacating the premises. Finally, in a paroxysm of internal rage, and a perfect outward calmness, the graceful Jacques retires—with a last ...

— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous

... all their glory, ventured to intimate his opinion that they, like other idols, had a fair share of clay and rubbish in their composition, and who, after professing a kind of sham republicanism, was frightened by the French Revolution into a paroxysm of ultra-Toryism. 'You wretched fribble!' exclaims Macaulay; 'you shallow scorner of all that is noble! You are nothing but a heap of silly whims and conceited airs! Strip off one mask of affectation from your mind, and we are still as far as ever from the real man. The very highest ...

— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... the "dear remembrance" of the splendors 'of tattoo and amocos; or that some unlucky wretch who has not mastered the hideous passions of his old paganism has almost battered out the brains of a fellow disciple in a sudden paroxysm of anger; or that some timid soul is haunted with half-subdued suspicions that some great goggle-eyed idol, with whose worship his whole existence has been associated, is not, what St Paul declares it is, absolutely ...

— The Eclipse of Faith - Or, A Visit To A Religious Sceptic • Henry Rogers

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